COVID-19 Disease, Suggested Measures, Government Initiatives and Outbreaks

Covid-19 Research Paper
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Covid-19 Research Paper
Coronavirus disease (Covid-19) currently dominates today’s society, and its history is being rewritten constantly. The disease poses a significant health burden for health systems and the sustainability of global populations given the high mortality rates that continue to be recorded. This report examines the Covid-19 pathogen, the antimicrobials for the disease, virus transmission routes, recommended measures to mitigate the health risk from the virus, government departments’ efforts to reduce the impact of the illness, and historical background of the disease as well as containment measures.
Description of the Pathogen
A sequence of acute unusual respiratory illnesses ravaged the City of Wuhan in China’s Hubei province starting from December 2019. The novel coronavirus that was causing these unusual infections in the Coronaviridae class and was later referred to as the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). The respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus is referred to as the Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) by the World Health Organization (WHO) (Parasher, 2021). This virus belongs to the same coronavirus group as the severe respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and the zoonotic Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) that caused more detrimental epidemics within recent years. Research indicates that the SARS-CoV-2 is a positive-stranded RNA virus in the genus Betacoronavirus characterized by a crown because of its spike glycoproteins, as seen in the figure below (Ouassou et al., 2020).
Figure 1: A graphical depiction of SARS-CoV-2 ultrastructural morphology (Ouassou et al., 2020).
The above illustration shows the ultrastructural morphology shown by a coronavirus. More importantly, note the spikes adorning the external surface of the pathogen, which impart the look of a corona engulfing the virion, as seen via the electron microscope.
Antimicrobials for Covid-19 Disease
Antimicrobials (more specifically antibiotics) are common medicines used to manage and treat bacterial infections. Antibiotics have been shown to slow down the reproduction of certain viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing Covid-19. Within laboratory tests, azithromycin is an antibiotic known to reduce inflammation and viral activity and thus has the potential to treat Covid-19 disease (Popp et al., 2021). Research in the use of antibiotics to manage Covid-19 indicated that azithromycin, cefuroxime, meropenem, vancomycin, cefepime, ceftazidime, ciprofloxacin, tazobactam/piperacillin, benzylpenicillin, erythromycin, gentamicin, ampicillin, amoxicillin-clavulanic, amoxicillin, ceftriaxone, clarithromycin, and doxycycline as highly recommended in the management of Covid-19 infection (i.e., severe, moderate, mild, and asymptomatic illness) (Adebisi et al., 2021). Adebisi and colleagues further noted that the WHO indicates that prophylaxis or antibiotic therapy should not be utilized in patients with moderate or mild Covid-19 unless it is justified.
Antibiotics do not work against the virus, including the SARS-CoV-2. The antibiotics, as mentioned earlier, have proved effec...